This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Canada. 2015 World Development Report Mind, Society.

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Presentation on theme: "This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Canada. 2015 World Development Report Mind, Society."— Presentation transcript:

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This work was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre, Canada. 2015 World Development Report Mind, Society and Behavior http://www.worldbank.org/content/dam/Worldbank/Publications/WDR/WDR%202015/WDR-2015-Full-Report.pdf Chiranthi Rajapakse Laleema Senanayake Radhika Gunawardena 13 th January 2015

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Overview Part 1: Expanded understanding of human behavior for economic development: A conceptual framework Part 2: Psychological and social perspectives on policy Part 3: Improving the work of development professionals 2

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A bat and ball cost $1.10. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost? Automatic system uses what comes quickly to mind to provide a plausible response 5

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Which do we use more? Routine situations? “…(the deliberative system) would be a supporting character who believes himself to be the hero…the thoughts and actions that the deliberative system believes it has chosen are often guided by the figure at the centre of the story, the automatic system” - Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman 6

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How do people make decisions? Standard economic theory - people use information in an unbiased way and perform careful calculations. But do people do this? 7

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Behavioral model of decision making Several departures from the standard economic model People may process only the information that is most salient to them Mismatch between intentions and actions (the intention-action divide). Even if people understand the full consequences of their actions may make decisions that favor the present at the expense of the future 9

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Why is this important for policy makers? People may be powerfully influenced by the way that options are described Simple changes in descriptions of options may change behavior Limited power of merely providing information – confirmation bias 10

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what our attention is drawn to and what we focus on are not always the things most needed for good decision making 13

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Anchoring Aspect of the environment that has no direct relevance to a decision BUT that nonetheless affects judgments. E.g. – the last thing that comes to mind Implications for survey design A. “How happy are you with life in general?” B. “How often do you normally go out on a date?” When question A asked first – no correlation between the answers But if question B is asked first – answers highly correlated 14

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Application: Consumer decisions in credit markets Field trial of payday borrowing in the United States 15

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The envelopes provided some anchoring to help borrowers evaluate the cost of payday loans 16

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Thinking socially; social norms “I’ll have what she’s having” Policies that take account of social norms better achieve development objectives. 18

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“Marketing” existing social norms to shift behavior Policies aimed at increasing tax revenues assumption that people are will evade taxes unless they face the right incentives BUT expected penalties explain very little of the variation in compliance Taxpaying = social norm involving conditional cooperation cooperate to the degree that others are cooperating When people feel that the tax system is fair and others are obeying the law More likely to comply In the United Kingdom, compliance increased when citizens received letters noting that most people in their postal code had already paid their taxes 19

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Example of social norms…corruption “Presenting an interesting political theory, Disaster Management Minister Mahinda Amaraweera yesterday said voters must not topple this government as chances are minimum for corruption among UPFA members as they may have amassed ill lucre enough by now and if the UNP came to power, they would start afresh to make a killing.” -Daily Mirror (2014-11-26) Acceptance of corruption Corruption in the social sense is a shared belief that using public office to benefit oneself and one’s family and friends is widespread, expected, and tolerated Study in India; refusing to grant favors could subject a public official to complaints filed by constituents 20

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Social meaning of an honest official = someone demanding no more than the going rate as a bribe Corruption may become automatic thinking for officials 21

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Social expectations can become internalized Diplomatic immunity No legal obligation to pay for parking violations in New York City Diplomats from countries where corruption is high had significantly more unpaid fines than those from countries where corruption is low 22

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Mental Models We generally use concepts that reflect the shared understandings of our community. We tend not to question views when they reflect an outlook on the world that is shared by everyone around us Differ from social norms; Mental models need not be enforced by direct social pressure capture broad ideas about how the world works and one’s place in it In contrast, social norms tend to focus on particular behaviors and to be socially enforced E.g.; In some societies parents don’t think young children need extensive cognitive and linguistic stimulation- even norms against verbal engagement 23

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The staying power of mental models “… As I was boarding the plane I saw that the pilot was black. I had never seen a black pilot before, and the instant I did I had to quell my panic. How could a black man fly an airplane?” - Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom mental models can be passed down from generation to generation: trust, gender, fertility, government 24

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Poverty “Poverty is not simply a shortfall of money. The constant, day-to-day hard choices associated with poverty in effect “tax” an individual’s psychological and social resources. This type of “tax” can lead to economic decisions that perpetuate poverty”: WDR, 2015 Poverty is a fluid state, not a stable condition Source: Jalan and Ravallion 2000; Pritchett, Suryahadi, and Sumarto 2000; Dercon and Krishnan 2000 Financial scarcity can consume cognitive resources Source: Mani and others 2013. 27

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Implications of anti poverty policies and programs Minimizing cognitive taxes for poor people Avoiding poor frames Incorporating social contexts into the design of programs Targeting on the basis of bandwidth may help people make better decisions Source: WDR 2015 team 28

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Early childhood development “Children in poor families can differ dramatically from children in richer families in their cognitive and noncognitive abilities, resulting in enormous loss of human potential for themselves and society”: WDR, 2015 Variations by wealth in basic learning skills are evident by age three in Madagascar Source: Fernald and others 2011 29

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Designing interventions that focus on and improve parental competence Complementing direct antipoverty programs Changing mindsets, underlying belief systems, and mental models of parents’ role Providing parents with the opportunity to learn and practice new skills and improve their mental health Using complementary classroom-based interventions to support parental competence A program in rural Senegal encourages parents to engage verbally with their children Source: WDR 2015 team, based on program material from the nongovernmental organization Tostan. Early childhood stimulation in Jamaica resulted in long-term improvements in earnings Source: Based on Gertler and others 2014 30

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Household finance “The consequences of biases in financial decision making can be profound for people in poverty, or on the edge of poverty, because they lack a margin for error”: WDR, 2015 The human decision maker in finance Losses loom larger than gains Present bias: Overweighting the present Policies to improve the quality of household financial decisions Framing choices effectively Changing default choices can improve savings rates Cognitive overload and narrow framing The social psychology of the advice relationship Source: Bertrand and Morse 2011Source: Thaler and Benartzi 2004 31

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Productivity “Understanding motivation and behavior at work requires us not only to zoom in to examine cognitive and psychological barriers that individuals face and the frames that work environments create but also to zoom out to examine the social contexts in which work takes place”: WDR, 2015 Unexpected wage increases can trigger a productivity dividend Source: Gilchrist, Luca, and Malhotra 2013 Altering the timing of purchases can be as effective as a subsidy for improving investment Source: Duflo, Kremer, and Robinson 2011 32

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Health “Telling people that there is a way to improve their health is rarely sufficient to change behavior. Successful information campaigns are as much about social norms as they are about information”: WDR, 2015 Changing health behaviors in the face of psychological biases and social influences Source: Ayers and others 2014 Improving follow-through and habit formation Source: Pop-Eleches and others 2011 33

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Climate change “An important role for psychological and social insights is to identify ways to convince populations to support, and governments to adopt, effective economic tools, such as carbon pricing, to curb greenhouse gas emissions”: WDR, 2015 Predicting the effect of rainfall forecasts on the success of growing familiar crops was difficult for farmers in Zimbabwe Source: Grothmann and Patt 2005 34

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Part III The biases of development professionals Adaptive design, adaptive interventions 35

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Do development professionals understand the circumstances in which the beneficiaries of their policies actually live, and the beliefs and attitudes that shape their lives? A deeper understanding of the context that fit local conditions Higher probability of succeeding 36

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37 Development professionals can be susceptible to a host of cognitive biases, can be influenced by their social tendencies and social environments, and can use deeply ingrained mindsets when making choices. Why is this important? Because the decisions of development professionals often can have large effects on other people’s lives, it is especially important that mechanisms be in place to check and correct for those biases and influences. Dedicated, well-meaning professionals in the field of development can fail to help, or even inadvertently harm, the very people they seek to assist if their choices are subtly and unconsciously influenced by their social environment, the mental models they have of the poor, and the limits of their cognitive bandwidth.

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Challenges and the associated decision traps that affect them The use of shortcuts in the face of complexity Confirmation bias and motivated reasoning Sunk cost bias The effects of context and the social environment on group decision making Each of these can be addressed through organizational measures itself. The challenge that development organizations face is how to develop better decision making procedures and policy processes to mitigate these problems 38

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The effects of context and the social environment on group decision making 42

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While the goal of development is to end poverty, development professionals are not always good at predicting how poverty shapes mindsets. Determinants of behavior are often subtle and hard to detect. Better means of detection, starting with asking the right questions are needed. 43

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What can we do? Concentrating more on the definition and diagnosis of problems, and expending more cognitive and financial investments at that stage, can lead to better-designed interventions Testing during the implementation stage …and tolerating failure can help identify cost effective interventions Development organizations may need to change their incentive structures, budget processes, and institutional culture to promote better diagnosis and experimentation so that evidence can feed back into midcourse adaptations and future intervention designs. 45

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What can we do? ….(cont) The process of delivering products matter as much as the product itself Effects and context on judgment and decision making Focus groups Being aware of the presence of biases and their consequences is the 1 st step to addressing them Asking the right questions Treating failures as somewhat expected and as opportunities to learn helps let go of a failing project 46

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48 This Report does not advocate specific interventions. Instead, it argues for the need to change the process of arriving at solutions, regardless of the nature of the problem Conclusion: Learning and Adapting Remember R&D is not meant to yield immediate profits or improvements R&D entails failure

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49 Discussion/Brainstorming How does this affect our work at LIRNEasia? 2015 WDR Report – Why read it? The theories discussed are not new A great deal of real-life studies, which gives context to the topic Demonstration of how Development Professionals think vs. the Reality on the Ground